Thanks to my faithful reviewers-almostinsane, mille libri, none, Anony, apm and JadeOokami. I'm sure you folks and your enthusiasm are the reason this story seems to be almost writing itself.

We will be getting to the Landsmeet soon, I promise.

The after dinner chat-fest broke up soon after Cousland's departure. Anora returned to her chambers, where Erlina assisted her in donning a nightgown and unbraiding and brushing her hair, then braiding it once more, in a single, looser braid to help keep it from tangling during the night. She washed her face and brushed her teeth, then dismissed the maid to a well-earned rest.

Laying in bed in the darkness, she waited for sleep to come to her. It sometimes didn't since Cailan's death. Everything else aside, she simply missed his presence, the comfort of him beside her in the dark. He often spent the early part of the night in someone else's bed, but always came back, washed and fresh and warm, to drape a heavy arm across her. Masterful though she was in light of day, at night that arm made her feel safe. She felt anything but safe now, and impotent besides.

Perhaps there had been some truth to Cousland's assessment of her performance. "…when things fell apart you let your father take over from you and act as regent. I can't imagine Celene of Orlais allowing anyone to do that to her and I don't think you have what it takes to rule this country in a time of war." After all, here she was, playing dead and hiding before the Landsmeet, because her father had the army at his disposal, giving her in effect no power at all. She had been worried about Cousland trivializing and disenfranchising her, when her own father had already done that. At a time when all of Ferelden needed to be united against the Blight, her father the great general was wasting Ferelden's soldiers in fruitless battles against each other. And there was nothing Anora could do about it by herself.

She knew what Eamon wanted-to depose her in favor of Alistair; or as a second solution, to marry her to Alistair. And that was workable, she supposed. Alistair knew nothing about ruling or the usages of power. He would defer to her, let her do the work. Her big problem there would be Eamon, who would also be seeking to advise and influence the young man. But Alistair reminded her of Cailan in many ways and she was not certain that she wanted to relive that life again.

"I would be willing to be a co-ruler with you. You are very good at some aspects of governance." From what Anora had been able to observe, Cousland was a man of his word. And his pedigree was impeccable, generations of nobility, just what the daughter of a commoner-turned-teyrn needed to strengthen her own position. The nobles would find Bryce Cousland's son more than acceptable as king at this juncture, probably more so than the unknown, illegitimate Alistair. And there was certainly nothing wrong with the way he looked! He was the one who'd be getting the short end of that stick, marrying a wife who was almost thirty and ten years his senior.

His attraction to the witch was a drawback, but they were obviously no longer a couple. By his own admission, he had a healthy sex drive, which would be helpful for the heir-siring end of things. Anora had lived with one randy young man, she supposed she would survive another. She would simply have to ignore the inevitable indiscretions when they came, after Cousland tired of trying to make her enjoy an act she had always found bearable at best.

Damn you, Cailan! Why did you have to go and leave me? I hope you're enjoying your tales and glory now!

After laying sleepless for what seemed like a couple of hours but was probably only closer to one, Anora finally gave up and rose from the bed, moving silently as possible so as not to wake Erlina. Donning a blue robe and slippers, she slipped quietly out the door and started down to the Arl's library. Though she'd done more than enough reading in the past few weeks, reading a book was infinitely preferable to laying in the dark alone with her thoughts.

The lamps in the library had been snuffed for the night, but the table near the door held a couple of small lamps that could be carried, if someone wanted some late-night reading. Anora took one up and entered the room. The stacks looked ominous, filled with deep shadows, but there was a bloom of light off to the left where the reading table was. She moved towards it and found another lamp sitting on the table. Cousland was reading there, in shirt sleeves, a pile of books at his left hand. He looked up at her approach, rose to his feet and bowed.

"Your Majesty."

"I didn't mean to disturb you, Warden. Please sit back down." He did not, instead moving around to the other side of the table to politely pull out a chair for her. The shirt was hanging loose, untucked and he looked quite dissolute, in breeches and wearing slippers on his feet. Propriety dictated that she should not be here, in her nightdress, alone and unchaperoned in the wee hours of the morning with a young man who was half undressed himself. Anora decided she didn't care a fig for propriety. Seating herself, she reached for the top book on his pile as he moved back around the table and sat down again. It was, to her surprise, a book of Antivan poetry.

"Couldn't you sleep?" she asked him. "I am sorry if I seemed to be mocking you earlier tonight. It wasn't my intention. From Alistair's reaction I gather that Grey Wardens often have trouble sleeping?"

Cousland nodded. "We do. We tend to hear the darkspawn in our dreams when we sleep. It's part of our ability to sense them. People who become Wardens during a Blight often have more trouble with that and some people are more sensitive than others. Lucky me, I'm a Blight Warden and appear to be one of the more sensitive ones. And don't worry, we knew you weren't mocking. You didn't know about it, so how could you? Between the darkspawn and nightmares about Highever, I don't get a lot of good sleep. Though that nap this afternoon was very nice. Which is part of my problem now."

"You need your head knocked halfway off your shoulders to get a decent rest?"

The Warden chuckled that pleasant chuckle of his. "Apparently! As a general rule, it's easier for me to sleep during the day. It's as if the darkspawn aren't as loud. I just don't get the chance very often when we're traveling. Here in Denerim I go down for my afternoon nappy just like a five-year-old, when I can."

"What about Alistair?"

"He doesn't have as much trouble as I do. But he likes his naps as well, when he can get them. I think that perhaps his nocturnal cheese habit is because eating the cheese helps him to sleep."

"That's odd."

"Not so much. Don't we give children warm milk to make them sleep?"

"I suppose you're right. Though I doubt he'd appreciate it being put to him in just that way."

For a moment, Cousland's eye got a decidedly wicked gleam to it, though it might have been a trick of the lamp light. "No…I don't suppose he would."

"So-are there any other interesting facts about the care and feeding of Wardens that I should know?" She'd meant it as a gentle jest, but the young Warden grew very still. He steepled his fingers together and dropped his face into their cradle for a long moment, then looked back up at her. His eyes were so dark they looked black rather than blue.

"I will be more honest with you than Duncan was with me," he said at last softly. "There are lots of things they don't tell potential Wardens about when they sign them on. Not until later, when it's too late. Aside from the darkspawn sensing business and the nightmares, it's hard for a Joined Warden to have children. Not impossible, particularly if the other parent isn't a Warden, but a lot more difficult."

"Then both you and Alistair…"

"You'd be looking at the same problem, regardless of which of us you married, yes."

"Why in the Maker's name would Duncan do something that would harm the fertility of one of Maric's only two sons? Particularly when the other one had not produced an heir yet?"

"I don't know! It's all of a piece with all the bad decisions that were made about Alistair. Though he doesn't regret it-he's happy being a Warden." He looked down at his book for a moment, then back up at her. "There is one other thing you should know. The Joining ceremony that gives us these abilities-it shortens our lives. Thirty years, more or less, from the Joining before the darkspawn voices in your head get to be too much and you can't shut them out any more. Alistair says that most Wardens go down to the Deep Roads to go down fighting rather than stay around and go crazy. So Blight and civil war aside, I have next to no expectation of living past fifty. Which might make the prospect of marrying me more appealing to you rather than less. I don't know."

Anora stared at him. "That's a horrible thing to say!"

"I'm sorry," Cousland said. He actually did look contrite. "I tend to turn into a total brat when I talk about this stuff. Not that I should be talking about it, really. But hey, what is Riordan going to do? Nothing to harm one of Ferelden's only three Wardens, that's for sure." He gave her a somewhat sickly smile. "Would you mind very much if we changed the subject?"

"Very well then-what are you reading there?"

"In the Pursuit of Knowledge-Travels of a Chantry Scholar, by Brother Genitivi," Cousland said.

"I've read that one, it's very good. You'll enjoy it."

"I thought that I might," the Warden said, lifting a page. "For all that I feel like I've walked across every square foot of Ferelden in the last few months, I've never actually had the opportunity to visit other countries. Besides, I've met Genitivi and I was curious about what sort of book he would write. From what little I've read so far, the man has a way with words. And he certainly gets around."

"You've met Brother Genitivi?"

Cousland's good cheer returned and he grinned. "What? You don't think I'm the scholarly type? Well I'm not, really, but my tutor Aldous always said I had learned thoroughly the things that I had to learn. As for meeting Genitivi, it's easy enough to do-he lives just across the Marketplace. Didn't you know?"

"No, I had no idea. But that still doesn't answer the question of why you met him."

"He was sort of a…consultant, I guess you'd call it, on one of my little endeavors a while back."

From what she knew of Cousland, that could have been absolutely anything.

"You know, if you'd like to talk to him, Your Majesty, it would be easy enough to send someone to fetch him here. Not Erlina, she is known. But Oghren or Leliana or Morrigan all know him and would be glad to ask him to come here. Or I would, for that matter. He wouldn't tell anyone about you. I know that it must be boring for you, cooped up here like this."

"There are only a couple of days before the Landsmeet, Warden. I suspect I'll manage to survive," Anora said coolly. "Though I thank you for the thought." She stifled a yawn with her hand. "It would appear that your company has done me some good."

"Bored you into somnolence, did I? Sorry about that."

"Warden, you are many things, but boring is not one of them! But I think I will try to go back to bed."

Cousland immediately got to his feet. "I will walk you to your room." He picked up his lamp and book, leaving the others on the table for the librarian to reshelf, as the man preferred. Shoving them all into one hand, he pulled her chair out like a proper, civilized lord and waited as she gathered up her own lamp.

"You're not going to take a book after all?"

She shook her head. "I think I can sleep now. I'll pick a few new ones out tomorrow."

They set their lamps back on the table and started up the stairs. Anora looked up at the tall figure pacing beside her and decided she was glad that he was night to Cailan's morning, because it made the odd sense of familiarity a little easier to take.

"You didn't have to tell me that just now. You shouldn't have, if you wanted me to marry you."

Cousland's mouth thinned. "I know. I can be calculating when I put my mind to it, but I didn't want to be about this. I want you to make an informed decision. It is more than I was given."

"You tell me you will oppose my solitary rule and that you will not be my prince-consort but king only, but you want me to make an informed decision?"

"Exactly."

"You are a very strange young man, Warden."

"You're not the first to tell me that, Your Majesty."

They had arrived at her door. She turned to face him and noticed, for the first time, the glimmer of something silver on his chest beneath the shirt. "What is that?" Anora asked, indicating it with a finger.

Cousland hooked his own finger under it and pulled it out. It appeared to be a Chantry amulet, but the symbol looked to be very archaic. "It's a reminder," he said cryptically, "that confronting one's self can be as frightening as fighting a dragon. Or more so."

"There's a rumor going around that you killed a dragon."

"The rumor's wrong. I didn't kill a dragon." Anora felt oddly disappointed, until he continued. "No one kills a high dragon by themselves. Morrigan, Oghren, Leliana and I killed a high dragon."

The Queen blinked, and took a moment to collect herself. "Then your armor really is…"

"Yes. From that dragon. Wade does good work, doesn't he?" Cousland sighed. "It was a shame to kill it, really. It was so beautiful, flying above the peaks. But the dragon cultists there had been feeding it and raising its babies. With them gone, the dragon would have had to start feeding itself. It would have begun preying on nearby villages and someone would have had to hunt it down. It stayed to fight us because we were on its territory. It would have been much harder to find later. It had to be done, but I still regret it."

"It's very good of you to share credit with your friends. Many warriors wouldn't."

The Warden rubbed his face. "Is it? I don't think there's anything extraordinary about that. I couldn't have done it without them, so why not say so? Father told me once that the very definition of a good lord was that he was the fellow who took the blame and shared the credit. I've not forgotten that."

"I thought perhaps that Morrigan had given the amulet to you," Anora admitted. "When you were in Fort Drakon, she said you had a ring she could use to find you."

"The amulet is a Chantry amulet. It's not Morrigan's style," the Warden said with a wry smile. "As for the ring, it was never, according to Morrigan, a love gift at all. She gave it to me before we…came together, saying that as I was the leader of the group, it would be helpful in finding me in the event of my capture. I offered to give it back to her when she broke with me, but she said that as our business was still in progress and I still very much in danger, that the need for it had not gone away and that I should keep it. Does it bother you that I still have it?"

"No, not particularly. She seems rather ruthlessly practical, Morrigan does."

"That's a good way of describing her. She is very straightforward when all is said and done. She will always tell you exactly what she is and is not willing to do." Cousland seemed a little glum talking about his former lover. Anora could have excused herself then, but she felt oddly comfortable talking to him in the darkened hall, and didn't want to end their conversation on a down note, so she asked another question.

"I must ask, for I never heard-how did you get out of Fort Drakon?"

"Oh, that." The Warden shrugged. "That was a set of lucky circumstances when all was said and done. The jailor got too close to our cell and I was able to grab him and kill him through the bars, then get the key off of him. When we got out, Alistair and I found all our armor and weapons in a chest by the door. I guess they'd left the stuff down there so that it would be convenient for your father to look through it when he got around to questioning us, but it was damned convenient for us as well. I wouldn't have wanted to lose Starfang."

"Starfang?"

"My sword."

"The one that was made for you?"

"That's the one. She's made of star metal, which you don't exactly find everywhere. In any event, we got dressed and killed the jailors and guard mabari in the dungeon, then cleaned up a bit and went up to the main floor. The armory was there, so we nabbed some guard uniforms. I figured the best thing to do was to hide in plain sight and besides, I didn't want to kill anybody else because we were going to need these fellows later to fight the darkspawn."

"How very restrained of you."

Cousland's grin flashed whitely in the dim hall. Recounting the escapade was apparently restoring his spirits. "Wasn't it just? Anyway, poor Alistair almost had a heart attack when I strolled us into the colonel's office to report as new recruits. Turned out the colonel was in fact expecting new recruits. So we trotted off to pick up our proper regulation swords, found the other two actual recruits who were going with us on patrol, then reported back to the colonel for final inspection. He grilled us a bit, inspected us, then sent us off with his blessing. Alistair and I walked right out the front door with the other two fellows, who conveniently knew the correct password, and with the good wishes of the other soldiers echoing behind us. We parted company with the other two when we were out in the street, on the pretext of covering more ground, and made it back here to Eamon's, easy as you please."

Anora shook her head. "Another miracle."

"No, just a bit of good luck, that."

"You and Alistair weren't…harmed in any way, were you?"

"You mean questioned or tortured?" She nodded, and he shook his head. "No. I think that if I'd not killed Howe beforehand things could have gotten pretty ugly. I gather that he liked to supervise a lot of that at Fort Drakon when he wasn't at home in his own little playroom. But things were in a bit of an uproar because we'd killed him and I guess that your father was intending to talk to us himself, only he was too busy sorting things out at Howe's place. We woke up in Drakon and proceeded to escape right away. Other than headaches and some bruises, Alistair and I were just fine. And since there were healing potions in our things, we didn't even suffer those for long after we woke up."

"It is quite the story. As good as any of Brother Genitivi's. Perhaps you ought to get him to write it down for you."

That thoughtfully pleased look came over him again. "It's an idea. Perhaps I'll talk to him about it one day." He bowed. "It is late, and I'm keeping you up. Good night, Your Majesty."

"Good night, Warden." She slipped into her bedroom, leaning back against the door once it had closed behind her.

"I want you to make an informed decision. It is more than I was given." When was the last time someone had been that honest with her, had told her something she needed to know, whether it was good for them or not? Anora couldn't recollect.

What would Cousland have done, had I kissed him under the pretext of 'making an informed decision'? The resulting fantasy was strangely warming, enough so that she was able to go back to bed and fall to sleep without missing Cailan's warm bulk at her back.